Category: thoughts

Thank You Note

Thank You Note Cover

One of my first mentors told me once that “the reward for good work is more work“! I dismissed her words, of course, as soft coercion. It can’t be great news when your team lead decides to throw in such motivational quotes, for no reason, in the middle of a gruelling work week! Yet these are the very words that I would recollect, every time I was thrown into a maze soon after cracking the one before.

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Relics from a Bygone Age

I remember that scent, sight and sound
From a time when life's pages had yet to turn
Playing in midday sun until we felt our skins burn
A handful of toys lost yet new friendships found.
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The Illusion of Control

Way back in 2004, one of the world’s largest soft drinks company pulled their “pure” bottled water product off the shelves because it had been contaminated with bromate, a cancer-causing chemical. In July 2010, a major tobacco maker admitted that child workers as young as 10 were working in tobacco farms related to them. Now in March 2018, a whistleblower (& thorough investigation) helped show that a data analytics firm might have abused data leak from the world’s largest Social Network.

While it might look inappropriate to compare the above three cases, it is worthy to note that they could have just got away with it, if not for some really gritty people/ media working behind the scenes helping to identify and put the pieces of the puzzle together.

Eventually when it comes to lawsuits, be it a major corporation exploiting children living in poor nations or a renowned firm causing health hazard, very little was done (or will be done) to punish big companies. In fact, large firms have the tendency to march on and make their brands even more powerful than before. End of the day, more harm will come to the economy (at least in the short term) by closing them entirely.

In case of the data leak you are more closely impacted no matter how insignificant you think you are and, if you have not realised it already, the best candidate to do damage control should a similar case arise in the immediate future.

Image Source: Internet

While it cannot even be classified technically as a data breach, that the data mined from Facebook along with promoted ads and a slew of fake news (allegedly backed by a “rival” superpower) eventually might have helped tilt the political climate of what is arguably the world’s most advanced nation. But I would like to keep this post far from politics and more close to real point of concern?—?what can you do to control the information being shared.

Towards a Secure and Safe Internet

Encrypted World

Around one year ago, Google Chrome announced that they would begin marking all sites that are not encrypted with HTTPS as “not secure” in their browser. This move essentially started shaming websites by displaying a “Not Secure” marker in the address bar. However this happened only when the site collected passwords or credit card info.

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The Art of Minting Money Online

Many years ago an ‘unknown benefactor‘ from Nigeria dropped me an email about a “once in a lifetime offer” that was simply too tempting to pass! You see, a very distant relative of his had recently passed away leaving billions of $ in unclaimed property. For unbeknownst reasons, all I needed to do now was to pass on my bank account and address details, so that my pal from Africa can work out finer details & help me claim a fortune and share it with me!

This would sound familiar to so many of us who were spammed a decade or so ago. In fact the same story has done so so many rounds, that we all started to crave for a change from this cringeworthy storyline, if not for a way out of spam emails!

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2017 – Hope & Optimism

Globally 2016 was a year ravaged with many calamities. The chaos that seemed to spread so quickly across the world was too hard for anyone to miss. When I look back, however, 2016 was NOT a miserable year. In many ways it was a good year for me.

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The Perfect Vision

I stood in front of a little wooden box
Mellow at first touch,
And coarse by the next
Curious, I slid open its crest.

It had two pairs of glasses
One rimmed with a golden frame
The other all rotten and rust
I decided, that try them I must.

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Eternal Spirit

You exist formless like the wind
You take no shape and yet
Complete the incomplete
Filling my void.


You are the solution to this enigma
You mark that final missing piece
The jigsaw finished
All questions answered.

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The Fight Within

Perched on the lush green tree,
In the middle of the field,
It’s eyes scouted the scene
Waiting for the next prey to yield.

There was much clamour,
Boisterous loud noises,
When men in fine armour
Burnt faith in to ashes.

Spitting and spewing hatred
With every gasp of breath;
Love’s defence was truly shattered
Whilst they did fight to their death!


Some said it was for a cause,
That it was glory to die for one’s land.
Had they learned to think and pause
Could they not sense it was getting out of hand?

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A Spark of Life

Several decades ago when we were waking ourselves from a nightmare that the world war was, all eyes turned East to salvage some pride. It needed a Gandhi for the world to come to the realization that what we really needed was a war without weapons, a fight without words.

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